In My Time - Dick Cheney [140]
During the meeting, the governor’s personal aide, Logan Walters, came in the room and told me Liz was on the phone and needed to speak with me. She told me that Pete Williams had called her to say NBC was getting ready to report that I was the governor’s pick to be vice president. I told her to tell Pete that no decision had been made yet, which was the truth, as George Bush was right that minute interviewing another potential candidate.
Later in the week I got some very timely advice from election lawyer Jan Baran, who had been one of our advisors in the vice presidential search process. I had asked Jan to look into what the requirements would be for reestablishing my Wyoming residency. Jan explained that there were generally a number of things a court would look at to determine an individual’s residency, including where he was registered to vote and whether he had voted in recent elections in his home state. Jan also explained that an important deadline was looming. If I wanted to register to vote ahead of Wyoming’s August primary, I would need to do so in person at the Teton County clerk’s office no later than that Friday, July 21. I arranged to make the trip home to Jackson and registered in person on that day.
I have always suspected that Pete Williams had a source in the Teton County clerk’s office that he shared with his colleague Lisa Myers, because shortly after I registered to vote, she ran it as breaking news on NBC. Suddenly the story was national news and speculation reached a fever pitch.
My voter registration trip even caught many in the campaign’s highest ranks by surprise. The process of selecting a vice president had been very closely guarded, and few knew that the governor was as close to picking me as he was. Joe Allbaugh and Bush’s communications director, Karen Hughes, who knew Liz had been helping me on the search, got hold of her on her cell phone and asked, “Could you explain to us just what your dad is doing in Wyoming?” Liz, who happened to be getting her hair cut at the time, excused herself, stepped into a utility closet at the salon, and whispered into her cell phone as much as she could about the Twelfth Amendment, the deadline to register in Wyoming, and why I was suddenly all over the news.
EARLY TUESDAY MORNING, I was working out on the treadmill at our house in Dallas when the phone rang. It was George Bush, and he was calling to formally ask me to be his running mate. I said I would be honored.
Ever since the previous Friday when I’d registered to vote in Wyoming, the press had been camped out in front of our house in Dallas. There was a double front door with a large window over the top, and on Monday morning when I walked out of our bedroom in my pajamas, I looked up to see a camera mounted so that it was looking straight in through that window. Another enterprising journalist left a disposable camera on the doorstep, along with a note suggesting that we might use it to take some personal photos of this historic day and then give the camera back to her to develop them.
I drove Lynne and Liz to Love Field, parked the car, and we flew to Austin for the formal announcement that I would be George Bush’s running mate.
Getting ready to fish the Snake River with Mary and Liz during the Democratic National Convention in August 2000. (Photo by David Kennerly)
It was the last time I would drive myself for the next eight and a half years. Even though I had held some prominent public positions as White House chief of staff, member of Congress, and secretary of defense, I don’t think